That Ruby, while having the mob connections that a strip club owner would have, was out of his mind. His actions in the time between Dealy Plaza and him shooting LHO, are the actions of a man desperately damaged by the History going on around him. He saw his chance and took it. He also had the police connections that a strip club owner would have had. Splains a lot if you get your history from Ollie Stone.

I'll backtrack the LHO lefty thing to a point. He was an attention seeker, first and foremost. Being a "Marxist- Leninist" in 1959 was a great way to get attention. But he still had to snuff a POTUS to get there.

The Truman hit at Blair House was also not a wingnut job, but they certainly weren't right wing hawks. Although in today's climate Truman would be quite the right wing crazy. You can't hug your children with nuclear arms.

I think I'd almost stick JWB in the almost nut category. His end game, probably as important as defending Southern womanhood, was that he would be more famous than ever. Not just as an actorman, but as a full fucking fledged national hero. His diary writings while on the run showed how shocked he was that rather than tearing the Union asunder, the assassination brought the country together. I tend to think his "operations" for the Confederacy were overblown...mostly because he seemed to have that bigger than life thing going. He did some stuff for the Confederacy but I don't see him being the Mitch Rapp of his era.

In 1863, everyone was a white supremacist.

I guess maybe the problem is that I sort of assume that to take out a head of state, you have to be a bit unbalanced. To me, that late 1800s forward brand of European anarchism, much like today's hipper version, was a form of mental illness. Or stupidity. But that's me looking at history through a modern prism, which I always call others out for.

I think that we can agree that anyone doing any kind of political violence aren't speaking for us. And that it is never, ever a good idea. Unless it's at the Sewer Department level.